10 Most Badass Movie Death Scenes Of All Time

Now THAT'S how you make an exit!

The Departed Matt Damon Death
Warner Bros. Pictures

Everything looks cooler in the movies. Conversations are snappier, explosions are grander, and even death looks better on the big screen.

Movie deaths come in all shapes and sizes. Some will make you reach for the tissues while others will have you sticking your head in a trash bin. But none are quite as entertaining as those that you make you stop and say "Daaaaaaaamn, that was badass!"

The most badass onscreen deaths tend to be some combination of heroic, violent, epic, and viscerally gratifying.

You know the type. Christian Bale chopping off the entirety of Taye Diggs' face with a sword in Equilibrium? Badass. Patrick Swayze ripping out that schmuck's throat in Road House? Super badass. John Hurt birthing to an alien via his chest cavity in Alien? Gross, iconic, and strangely funny... but decidedly not badass.

See the difference?

Now, let's take a few moments to applaud those who have mastered the art of dying onscreen. Cheers to the men and women who have given us some truly awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, mind-blowing demises to watch over and over and over again.

10. Samuel L. Jackson Gets Eaten By A Motherf*cking Shark! - Deep Blue Sea

The Departed Matt Damon Death
Warner Bros. Pictures

At first viewing, this seemed like any other legendary Samuel L. Jackson monologue, equal parts furious and triumphant. Sure, it lacked the nastiness of his Ezekiel 25:17 rant from Pulp Fiction or the pure emotive brilliance of his Mr. Glass speech from Unbreakable, but this was certainly one of his more heroic rallying cries.

Unfortunately, before his onscreen audience can really take his words to heart and break out into the kind of righteous applause we'd expect for such a rousing sermon, Mr. Jackson suddenly - like, seriously, out of nowhere - gets ripped apart by a genetically engineered shark.

The only thing better than Jackson's earnest delivery is the giddy shrewdness with which the filmmakers pull the rug out from under his - and our - feet.

"We're not going to fight ANYMORE! We're going to PULL together, and we're going to FIND a way out of here! First, we're going to seal off this AARRRGGHHHHHH!!!!!!" Aaaaaand, there's your mutant shark attack.

Hell, it's hard to even call this a shark attack. It's more like a shark missile launcher turned shark wood-chipper. A CGI Jackson is crunched in half by the beast before being drug into the water. It's gnarly. And also pretty awesome.

Contributor

Jacob is a part-time contributor for WhatCulture, specializing in music, movies, and really, really dumb humor.